Connect with Us

Letter: Opposition forces election

I would like to respond to the letter to the editor “Harper’s Democracy is to Porogue Parliament” written by Ryth McKeage (April 6 Capital News).

I would like to set the record straight on this subject. She states that “The Harper government was found guilty of a historical first in all the Commonwealth countries—contempt of Parliament.”

This is a very clever play on words. I would like to point out that the key word here is “found.” This does not mean that other governments have not been guilty of contempt. The Liberals were guilty of contempt many times before when they were formed government. The gun control act( bill C-68) is one example. Alan Rock told Parliament that the gun control act would cost a mere $3.5 million to implement. That cost has turned out to be in the thousands of millions of dollars and counting.

In fact, Shiela Fraser stated we may never know the true costs.

Police Commissioner J.P.R. Murray protested the inaccurate numbers that were derived from RCMP crime stats, by the CACP and federal justice department—the actual number of firearm related deaths for 1993 was 73 not 623.

The fact that they forced these laws through Parliament, and continued to use these numbers, even after being officially notified about the error, was contempt of Parliament.

There are many more examples, but of course, since the Liberals had a majority, they would never find themselves in contempt and nothing could be done about it by anyone else. The Liberals and Opposition have been using smear tactics and dreaming up ways to discredit the Conservative government any way they can to force an election. The contempt of Parliament charge was just another clever fabrication to these ends.

The real story here is that this is a historical first in all the Commonwealth countries that the Opposition has resorted to such skullduggery.

Mark Goddard,

Kelowna

We encourage an open exchange of ideas on this story's topic, but we ask you to follow our guidelines for respecting community standards. Personal attacks, inappropriate language, and off-topic comments may be removed, and comment privileges revoked, per our Terms of Use. Please see our FAQ if you have questions or concerns about using Facebook to comment.